Complacency can be a dangerous thing ... ! Over the last year all our competitions have been carried out remotely using Zoom and have generally gone very well. In the beginning there was a certain amount of trepidation about getting everything to run correctly but over time things became easier. Until this week and this competition night!
On normal nights (and by normal I mean pre-pandemic face-to-face meetings) I would run through all the images for the judge to see for the first time as well as all the members present getting a preview. Now the images are sent to the judge prior to the competition so they can be viewed in the correct resolution. So in order for the members to get a preview on the night I create a simple mp4 slide show and run it before judging starts proper.
Barring a few minor issues, usually centred around internet quality, these slide shows have largely gone okay. Until, that is, this week ... !
On club nights I connect to Zoom using my own PC with an additional external monitor. On competition nights I have to use the club's laptop because this one has the licensed copy of the competition software. I simply connect to my external monitor and away we go. But on this occasion when I started the images were decidedly low-res!!? Restarting the show didn't improve matters so rather than waste time I just carried on but obviously conscious of the poor quality of the member's viewing experience. Hopefully the issue will be resolved when I run the competition!
Nope, it was just the same ... ? Fortunately, because the judge had already seen the images, so she passed comment and judgement based on the real images rather than the 'projected' images.
The 'half time' break couldn't come soon enough as far as I was concerned when I could try and fix this problem. As it turned out it was as simple as changing to the correct colour profile!
Previously everything had worked out satisfactorily, so complacency caused me to forget to check the colour profiling. So be warned, always 'sweat the small stuff' and ALWAYS follow a systematic, consistently applied approach in getting your kit set up.
So, to the competition. This was a colour only competition - not a colour theme, just all images should be in colour - no black and white or monochrome.
As usual there was a wide variety of subject matter. From landscapes, seascapes, architecture, bridges, portraits, flora & fauna and a young child who looked like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
The latter frightening the judge a little because in these situations one wrong word can seriously upset someone. And I don’t just mean from a photographic sense. The child would be more than likely related to the photographer and wouldn’t hear a bad word spoken of ‘Little Miss Blue Eyes’.
So congratulations to Trevor Lax for getting top marks in the Intermediate section with his rather soggy walking boot shot entitled 'Splash!' and to Alan Douglas for his still life shot simply titled 'Tulip'.
And finally thanks to Lynn Haith for her valued comments on a total of almost 80 images - oh, and for putting up with the technical issues ...
22 March 2021
Splash! by Trevor Lax
Tulip by Alan Douglas